Rauf Lecture Reveals Radicalism

The United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has of non-Muslims, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of the effort to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York, told an Australian audience in July 2005.

In a taped speech, Rauf made a number of comments that would make anyone who is not concerned about the mosque at the Ground Zero site rethink their support for the man tasked with heading the "bridge-building" center. Among them [click on the play button to hear each one]:

"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it."

(IPT fact check: A report by the British government said at most only 50,000 deaths could be attributed to the sanctions, which were brought on by the actions by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.)

The United States has supported authoritarian regimes, Rauf said, and it's understandable that people in those nations would take action into their own hands. "Collateral damage is a nice thing to put on a paper but when the collateral damage is your own uncle or cousin, what passions do these arouse? How do you negotiate? How do you tell people whose homes have been destroyed, whose lives have been destroyed, that this does not justify your actions of terrorism. It's hard. Yes, it is true that it does not justify the acts of bombing innocent civilians, that does not solve the problem, but after 50 years of, in many cases, oppression, of US support of authoritarian regimes that have violated human rights in the most heinous of ways, how else do people get attention?"

(IPT fact check: This is justifying acts of terrorism by blaming the United States for the oppression of Islamic regimes of their own citizens. This also ignores U.S. aid of Muslim citizens in nations such as Kosovo and Kuwait).

Asked why Muslims commit suicide bombings, Rauf belittled the fanatical religious motivation of such attacks and said: "But what makes people, in my opinion, commit suicide for political reasons have their origins in politics and political objectives and worldly objectives rather than other worldly objectives. But the psychology of human beings and the brittleness of the human condition and how many of us have thought about taking our own lives, we may be jilted, had a bad relationship, you know, didn't get tenure at the university, failed an important course, there's a host of reason why people feel so depressed with themselves that they are willing to contemplate ending their own lives. And if you can access those individuals and deploy them for your own worldly objectives, this is exactly what has happened in much of the Muslim world. "

(IPT fact check: Here Rauf tries to negate that suicide bombings are driven by Islamic religious beliefs and trying to equate terrorist activity to someone who doesn't get tenure.)

On Israel, Rauf said he does not favor the plan to establish a Palestinian state along with Israel. Instead, "The differences, perhaps, may lie on whether the solution lies in the two-state solution or in a one-state solution. I believe that you had someone here recently who spoke about having a one land and two people's solution to Israel. And I personally - my own personal analysis tells me that a one-state solution is a more coherent one than a two-state solution. So if we address the underlying issue, if we figure out a way to create condominiums, to condominiamise Israel and Palestine so you have two peoples co-existing on one state, then we have a different paradigm which will allow us to move forward."

(IPT fact check: A one-state solution is a euphemism for the destruction of Israel, because Palestinian Muslims will quickly outnumber the Jewish resident of Israel. Such a position is advocated by radical groups, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.)

"And when we observe terrorism," he said, "whether it was done by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or by al Qaida or whoever is behind the bombings in London or those in Madrid, we can see that they were target political objectives.

Rauf, who is on a trip to the Middle East sponsored by the State Department, gave the speech on July 12, 2005, at the University of South Australia.

Reader comments on this item

Surprising for IPT

Submitted by Jay, Oct 4, 2010 15:56

I used to respect the work of the IPT but this is definitely a new low for them. It used to be that the quotes spoke for themselves and demonstrated the hatred that individuals felt towards America.

However the above apparently needs to tell me how to read into those statements; many of which I find innocuous. If the IPT is so desperate as to push this out, then maybe there isn't a terror supporting story with the Ground Zero mosque and the IPT should leave the story alone. While it is big news it clearly does not fit into the framework of the IPT's mission unless that mission has changed to "let's hate all Muslims."

This is poor analysis by the IPT and whomever was in charge of it should be ashamed of themselves. It makes the IPT look like a bunch of bigots as their opponents call them. Half of those "fact checks" are in fact opinions. And last I checked opinions are not facts.

Rauf is no radical

Submitted by Y Brandstetter MD, Sep 2, 2010 05:45

He is a main-stream muslim making the claims of main-stream muslims. He is absolutely correct regarding American support for authoritarian regimes which oppress their own peoples, such as the Saudy dynasty, the Mubarack regime, the PLO regime, and the Hashemite kingdom-tyranny. The only justification for US behaviour is Oil, and as soon as Oil is irrelevant (2020 by some recokonings) the US sponsorship of the authoitarian oil-shiekdoms will dissolve, leaving the ME to solve its own problems without US intervention

Islamophobic propaganda

Sep 1, 2010 19:07

I agree with "Skeptical", this article is unfortunately political propaganda and not an intelligence report.

This is demonstrated by the absurd fact check accusing him of secretly wanting to destroy Israel (some interesting "facts" there).

Rauf forgets that Muslims murder more Muslims than anyone

Submitted by Ann, Aug 28, 2010 05:46

Who murdered more Muslims AND non-Muslims than any group on earth? Muslims themselves. There are over 1,000 terror attacks commited by Muslims every single day in the world.

Rauf clearly has only a one pointed view of the responsibility of his own, which is typical for Muslims. They will never admit the invasions and bloodshed they have commited around the world and still to this day continue to commit.

We did not train, fund, or materielize a young Osama bin laden.

Submitted by Proxywar, Aug 27, 2010 04:56

We can also see that our training and materiel for a young Osama Bin Laden

"Osama bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera (journalist) Tayseer Alouni in October 2001: "The name 'al-Qaeda' was established a long time ago by mere chance. The late Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri established the training camps for our mujahedeen against Russia's terrorism. We used to call the training camp al-Qaeda. The name stayed."

"But Bergen and others argue that there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land since there were a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight; that Arab Afghans themselves had no need for American funds since they received several hundred million dollars a year from non-American, Muslim sources; that Americans could not have trained mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of them to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan; and that the Afghan Arabs were almost invariably militant Islamists reflexively hostile to Westerners whether or not the Westerners were helping the Muslim Afghans."

"According to Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, the idea that "the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden ... a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. ... Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. ... The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him."

Osama was of the ARAB-Afghans. ie. Of the foreign Arabs who showed up in Afghan to help out the local Muslim Afghans fighting against the USSR. This conflict is not over either. It now continues in Chechnya for offensive jihad-build-up purposes.

No

No the CIA did not finance, train, or create UBL/Al-qaeda. This is a moonbat myth told by many troofers. Mr.Quevedo is really trying hard to protect his sham of a religion. It's ok I've heard it all the excuses from islamic-apologists before.

Good book on this subject: Disinformation : 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror

"Osama bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera (journalist) Tayseer Alouni in October 2001: "The name 'al-Qaeda' was established a long time ago by mere chance. The late Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri established the training camps for our mujahedeen against Russia's terrorism. We used to call the training camp al-Qaeda. The name stayed."

"But Bergen and others argue that there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land since there were a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight; that Arab Afghans themselves had no need for American funds since they received several hundred million dollars a year from non-American, Muslim sources; that Americans could not have trained mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of them to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan; and that the Afghan Arabs were almost invariably militant Islamists reflexively hostile to Westerners whether or not the Westerners were helping the Muslim Afghans."

"According to Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, the idea that "the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden ... a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. ... Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. ... The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him."

Osama was of the ARAB-Afghans. ie. Of the foreign Arabs who showed up in Afghan to help out the local Muslim Afghans fighting against the USSR. This conflict is not over either. It now continues in Chechnya for offensive jihad-build-up purposes.

Smack whoever told you this lie.

Ronanld reagan took Saddam off the terrorist watch list twice once in 1983 and another time in 1984 and then sent Rumsfeld to meet with Saddam knowing that saddam had gassed the Kurds, but America needed Saddam to keep the Mullahs at bay. This was confirmed in a defense department document which stated: "no one had any doubts about (the Iraqi's) continued involvement in terrorism." Moreover, the israelis convinced Reagan that their were moderates inside the Iranian theocracy that he could make deals with, which then lead to Reagan selling arms to Iran in exchange for Lebanon hostages which was Illegal. The proceeds from that quid pro quo then went to funding the anti-communist Contras. Iran then double crossed us by not reigning in Hizbullah in Lebanon and in the Gulf. Then followed it up with missile boat attacks against unarmed Kuwaiti oil tankers. Reagan ignored the seminal lesson of the Barbary wars: Providing arms to pirate states in the Middle East only produces more piracy. So to defend America's oil supply from Kuwait, Reagan sent our Navy back into action. Mind you, the Kuwaiti news papers like the Saudi news papers at this time were slandering the USA with Osama bin laden-esque rethoric. I won't even get into how Reagan romanticized the Mujahideen as freedom-fighters not knowing the whole time they hated US and the RUSSKIES just as bad. The only thing Reagan was good at was pubically speaking about conservative prinicples though he never really followed them in practice. Reagan couldn't out smart Middle East cut-throats.

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